maintenance_vip
The Maintenance VIP module allows site administrators to grant bypass access to a Drupal site in maintenance mode using a secure, shareable URL. This is ideal for giving clients, stakeholders, or QA teams temporary access to review a site before launch, without requiring them to have a user account or log in.
Features
- Simple URL bypass: Access the site via
/vip/{your-token}. - Secure sessions: Generates an HTTP-only, secure cookie valid for 24 hours to prevent hijacking.
- Easy logout: Users can drop their VIP session by visiting
/vip-logout. - Proxy friendly: Works flawlessly behind Nginx, Varnish, or CDNs since it integrates directly with Drupal's maintenance mode service decorator.
Post-Installation
Once installed, no complex permissions or cache rebuilds are needed to manage the token.
- Navigate to Configuration > development > Maintenance VIP (
/admin/config/system/site-information). - Scroll down to the new Maintenance VIP Token field.
- Enter a secure, unique string (e.g.,
client-review-2026) and save the configuration. - Enable Maintenance mode as usual.
- Share your link (
https://yoursite.com/vip/client-review-2026) with your testers.
Additional Requirements
This module is self-contained. It requires no additional external libraries or contributed modules.
Similar projects
Modules like Maintenance Allow IP or similar IP-whitelisting solutions exist. However, whitelisting IPs is often problematic and time-consuming when clients are on mobile networks, corporate VPNs, or dynamic IPs. Maintenance VIP solves this by using a token-based approach, making it much more flexible for non-technical users while keeping the site locked.
Supporting this Module
Feel free to open issues, feature requests, or provide patches in the project's issue queue.